The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, the approaches described in this section may not be prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
The use of business office appliances has proliferated as offices have become more automated and less dependent on manual devices. The term “business office appliance” as used herein may refer broadly to any device configured to create electronic or paper documents, including providing one or more of the following functions: copying, printing, scanning, and facsimile transmission. One embodiment of a business office appliance is a multi-function peripheral (MFP) device. As an increasing number of businesses expand into new markets while becoming more decentralized, the number of business office appliances deployed has similarly increased. Many business office appliances operate as network devices, often behind a firewall.
In addition to the obvious security advantages obtained through operating a business office appliance behind a firewall, there are some disadvantages. Retrieval of the current status of the business office appliance requires a visit by a technician. Such visits create both a service disruption and increased operation costs such as downtime that ultimately are borne by users.
Based on the foregoing, there is a need for an approach of retrieving the status of one or more business office appliances operating behind a firewall.